


Umbrella Policy

by SylvanWitch



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Mycroft has Feelings, Pining, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 04:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1291807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft leaves his umbrella at Baker Street.  He certainly  has no intention of retrieving it.  You know what they say about intentions and the road to hell...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Umbrella Policy

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a flash-fiction (1000 words or fewer) prompt from a friend on LiveJournal who asked for "Mycroft/anyone: Mycroft and relationships - does that work, or not? Why is it so difficult to imagine him with anyone? What does he hide? Or any kind of backstory which made him into the man we meet." 
> 
> No backstory, I'm afraid. What came to me first was an image of Mycroft watching John hold his umbrella. The rest sort of wrote itself.

It was raining.

The observation, patently absurd for its obvious nature— _It was raining in London.  Who’d have imagined?  Better phone Whitehall!_ —should have left Mycroft in a sour mood.  He loathed banalities.

True, he’d occasionally fantasized about controlling the weather, but he’d be forgiven for such an uncharacteristic whimsy if one were privy to what he was of British intelligence.  Now and again a sandstorm in Herat or a gale along the coast of Somalia would be exceptionally useful.

Just now, however, the weather had a peculiarly personal interest for Mycroft Holmes, more than any of the hundred and thirty-seven missions for which he was currently in whole or in part responsible.

He’d left his umbrella at Baker Street.

This unforgiveable oversight, so uncharacteristic of him, made him profoundly uncomfortable, and it was only through an iron will both admirable and regrettably stereotypical of a man of his nationality and station that he kept from shifting in his seat.

He was awash in strobing blue police lights as he squinted through the rain-blurred side window of his car while his brother and John Watson examined the body of a poor young woman who’d had the bad taste to die in the middle of the street.

Truth be told, he didn’t care what or who had killed the girl.  He wasn’t at the scene for the mystery nor for his brother’s doubtless impending solution to it.

Mycroft Holmes was watching John Watson’s broad, strong hand curled around the bamboo handle of _his_ umbrella.

He was astonished to find that he was jealous of an inanimate object, a discovery in equal parts unsettling and intriguing.

Mycroft Holmes did not have attachments, not to people nor to things.  Had he any illusions about ownership, he might have admitted that he possessed the ineffable, indefinable currents of power that flowed through his position of influence, but he wasn’t foolish enough to have illusions.

The umbrella had been left absentmindedly when he’d gone round to his brother’s flat, having been reliably informed that Sherlock was in only to find that his brother had given the slip to the cameras.

Watson had answered his terse knock against the open door’s frame, sparing him a glance from his newspaper before lowering it.

“He’s not here.”

“So I had deduced.”

Watson had held Mycroft’s imperious gaze, indicating with an expressive eyebrow that Mycroft could just shove off, then, if he was done.

Instead of leaving, which would have been the logical thing, Mycroft had stepped into the room, leaned his umbrella against the doorframe, and surveyed the mantel as if searching for some item of particular relevance.

In fact, he’d found himself scrambling for some excuse to prolong the visit.  It had been such a…surprise…the unexpected uptick in his heart-rate, the rush of blood to his face in response to this man’s cautious regard, that he’d been momentarily flummoxed.

Mycroft hadn’t been flummoxed since the fifth form. 

The ensuing years since that unfortunate event had done nothing to enamor him of the experience.  He’d felt sweaty-handed and fumbling and had the unaccountable urge to giggle, which urge he’d stifled only by biting his tongue.

In the eternity of seconds it had taken Mycroft to formulate a reasonable explanation for his lingering, Watson had stared at him with a steady, stolid look that had somehow managed to convey both an understandable annoyance and something else—an impudent curiosity, perhaps, the singular quality that made John Watson such an exceptional match for Mycroft’s mercurial brother.

“I had wondered how you’re getting on here.”  It had been inane.  Worse, dull.  But it had been all Mycroft could think of.  He’d been unaccountably distracted by the fine hairs at the back of Watson’s neck, where they were pushed up by the collar of his jumper.

“You inquire purely out of curiosity?” Watson had answered.  There had been no mistaking the challenge in his tone.

“I’m not going to pay for your response, if that’s what you mean.”  Mycroft heard his own tone, waspish and short, but he hadn’t been able to temper it.  He’d had little occasion to be wrong-footed, and he was reminded of how much he disliked the feeling.

“Fine.  I’m fine.  We’re both fine.”  Watson’s repetition had been deliberate and pointed.  Also, a dismissal.

“That’s…”

He’d found, with horror, that he’d been about to say, ‘fine.’ 

“Unexpected,” he’d chosen instead and watched a coldness seep into Watson’s eyes.

“That all?”

A more blatant dismissal.

“It’s good to see you’ve settled in, Doctor Watson.  My brother is—.”  _Fortunate_.  _Blessed_.

“—out,” Watson had finished for him.

Whatever urbane, cutting phrases would ordinarily have served Mycroft abandoned him then to the recognition that he’d done a bad job of things.

Worse, he’d actually cared that John’s look had turned cold and dismissive.

Only after his car had left the curb had Mycroft remembered his umbrella.

He’d sworn he wouldn’t retrieve it, and of course that’s not why he was here now.  One didn’t skulk about crime scenes to recover such a replaceable object.  No, he was here to speak to Sherlock, whenever his brother had finished swanning about playing detective.

But Mycroft couldn’t keep his eyes from Watson: the doctor’s hand, strong around the wood of the handle; his hair, frosted with a light mist that the umbrella couldn’t combat; his shoulders, broad and strong; his eyes, alight with energy as Sherlock expounded upon some detail.

Mycroft resisted a horrifying wave of want that crested in his stomach and threatened to rise up and out of his throat as an incoherent sound and tore his eyes away.

Admitting defeat—he couldn’t possibly exit the car in this state; he’d have to catch his brother elsewhere—Mycroft ordered the driver to take him to his club.

He kept a spare umbrella there.

 


End file.
